


Children

by Schrodingers_Rufus



Category: Herbert West - Reanimator - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Blood, Children, Ficlet, Flash Fic, Gen, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-11 22:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16861645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schrodingers_Rufus/pseuds/Schrodingers_Rufus
Summary: Originally posted to Tumblr on October 18, 2016.Prompt: lovecraft herbert, children





	Children

Just as our morbid research found success in the young factory town of Bolton, so too did our practice. There were few experienced doctors in the area, and as such Herbert West and I were forced by necessity to become not only surgeons but pediatricians. 

With often both parents laboring in the mill, children roamed the streets unattended, speaking a sort of pidgin tongue among themselves that neither West nor I had the skill to decipher. 

It was a band of such children who appeared at our office one day, wailing and jabbering unintelligibly. The reason why was soon apparent: two young boys near the back of the group struggled to hold up a third. The injured child, his pale face ringed with yellow curls, appeared to be struggling to remain conscious. Twin rivulets of blood dripped from an unseen head injury.

West pushed past me, snatching the boy from his companions and carrying him into the office, his small frame appearing strained with the unusual effort. (I was often the one tasked with carrying the dead from the potter’s field into our clandestine laboratory, given my relative strength.) He set the boy onto the examining table with as much gentleness as West was capable, and he soon set to combing through his blood-matted hair in search of the injury. He moved with a tenderness that seemed uncannily familiar to me, and I realized with a start that he was looking at the child with the same awed intensity he typically reserved for our specimens. 

West clicked his tongue with annoyance. “Not fatal.”


End file.
